[Book Review] JANISMIMURA. Planning for empire: Reform bureaucrats and the Japanese wartime state.

Abstract

Janis Mimura focuses on “reform bureaucrats,” or more precisely Japanese economic reform bureaucrats during the 1930s and early 1940s. She argues that they promoted “techno-fascism,” which “represented a new form of authoritarian rule in which the ‘totalist’ state is fused with military and bureaucratic planning agencies and controlled by technocrats” (p. 4). Unlike some recent works that have examined fascist tendencies in Japanese culture, ideology, and everyday life, Mimura focuses on bureaucrats' visions and policies. This emphasis illuminates the nature of the political regime in this period.